Latest Update

Sunday Night, 1-4-2009

Well, it's truly now the end of a wonderful vacation. I did go to work on Friday, but it was an easy day, not much freight to haul and some of my vendors were not open. I did use the time to wash my Freightliner after having driven it for two weeks in snow and ice. And last Friday we were blessed with fresh snow again, just after the last of the old snow had melted. Pictures follow below.

Saturday we went to Olympia and visited with the kids Grandma Cheryl and Andy, we had a nice visit and they gave us a beautiful Tandem Bicycle that I hope to fix up soon and enjoy riding with Colton or anyone else. It's a real nice bike and just a few repairs and it will be on the road. The kids enjoyed playing WII on the big screen TV.

We then drove on to Shelton and fixed dinner for mom. Mom took pity on Olive and let her in the house for the first time. As those that know, she's a very quiet dog, she just found a cozy spot and slept most of the visit. The kids used their laptops downstairs where it was toasty warm from the wood stove. It too was a wonderful visit, and I enjoyed the drive home in the Suburban, who knew we could afford to drive that to Oma's compared to last year when a trip like that would have cost $40.

It's snowing out again, the night before Sandy and the kids go back to school. We'll see how that turns out in the morning. Enjoy the most recent pictures.

Thursday Morning, 1-1-2009

I tried to stay up but couldn't make it to midnight. In fact I didn't even hear all the fireworks (and guns, it's a redneck thing) at midnight. Today all the holiday trim is coming down, and it's a very dreary day here with high winds and rain.

Yesterday I took years off my life by keeping the shop door shut with the propane heater running and doing lots of welding and fabricating. I was in a blue haze several times from off gassing by the arc welder. Mom had given me a very used Log splitter that dad used to borrow from his neighbors. It was in rough shape, the chrome hydraulic piston had been left exposed for years and was badly pitted. The new engine that replaced the original was not designed for a log splitter since the exhaust was pointed at the operator. The coupler between the motor and pump was shot, so I had my work cut out for me. Since I couldn't turn the motor around, I moved the splitting beam from one side to the other, rerouted 3 hydraulic lines, installed the coupler and finally fabricated a front nose wheel for the splitter so it can be moved around easily by anyone, simply by pulling it like a wagon. The wheel drops off so it can be towed behind a car or tractor if it's not needed, but since it will most likely be used just in our neighborhood this is a nice feature. See my handy work below.

Wednesday, 12-31-2008

Happy New Year to anyone who happens to drop into my web site. Despite a troubling economy we are going to be optomistic as we go into 2009. Sandy is worried she will be losing her job with severe cut backs in the state budget directly affecting our schools but we'll see what happens.

Yesterday we suprised the kids with the news we are going back to Disney Land for spring break, taking the trailer down and staying at Orangeland RV resort. The Kids remember 7 years ago how fun it was to swim in the huge pool outside in the middle of February, and we do have fond memories of that trip, but we also had to laugh about a few other things, while there our trailer was burglered for the first time (while we were at Disneyland for the day), our neighbors accidently unloaded 100 gallons of sewege on the lawn and under our trailer, and in the middle of the night a lady came to our trailer screaming "help me help me" but before we could get out of bed (not that we really wanted to) our trailer was surrounded by police vehicles. Turned out to be a medical emergency, but we didn't know.

But we are excited to have this big trip to look forward to, we have a three day park hopper pass already paid for. Sandy will get her share of trailer driving on this trip since I've made this trip so many times with the Boeing Scan Eagle equipment that I plan on being a passenger some of the time.

Our clothes dryer died the other day, just quit heating, everything else worked though. We debated whether to call a repair man, but a service call with parts would quickly be $200 and a new dryer is $300 on sale so we opted to just buy a new dryer and replace the 14 year old unit. Once the new one was in place I thought I'd give the old one a look over and see if I could figure out what went wrong. I started dismanteling it in the garage, always curious about mechanical things, and since we were junking it anyway, I like to save as many nuts and bolts or srews as I can salvage.

Well when I took the front off the machine and removed the drum it turned out that the inside of our old machine was like a time capsule with trinkets and coins. I have no idea how all this stuff gets out of the drum and inside the machine, but there was over twenty dollars in coins, lots of childrens jewelry, hair clips, paper clips, nails....the list goes on. It was so funny to find all these small treasures we lost in the laundry many years ago.

We think how many people give away their old machines to be recycled and never knew what kind of treasures went with them. Several childrens rings from Nora were in the bottom, but they could have easily been real jewelry. So if you ever give away an old appliances, do your self a favor and open them up before they leave your home, you'll never know what you might be missing.

As I was stripping out the all the wiring for the old machine I did locate the problem, an overheated fuseable link, that had I known where to look I could have replaced, but by the time I found that I'd pretty much already destroyed the old machine stripping it down. The drum makes an excellant burn barrel ring so it's now stting ontop of the semi wheel we use to burn our paper items outside.

The kids are enjoying their new phones that they bought. Sandy and I paid for the service, but they had to buy their own phones, they like the ones with key boards for texting, and Nora has hers intergrated with her email and web access. Sandy still needs to activate her voice mail, but her leap into the 21st century from her Amish ways has gone suprisingly smooth.

The last of the snow is melting fast now, the animals are happy to be out in the fields again, and even the horses are running around without their new winter coats. See Ya.......

Friday, 12-26-2008